While the Queen was considering this suggestion, Notta began feeling in the pockets under his disguise for a paper and pencil, so that he could get into the conversation, but without result.
"No use being polite! Let's joke and run," puffed the clown, after an unsuccessful search. Leaning over the edge of the bus, he tapped the Queen sharply on the jar. Preserva dropped her pad and pencil and almost rolled from the throne. Inside the jar, they could see her jellied figure bubbling with fright and indignation. The Prime Preserve also trembled in his jar, then leaning down to read the last command of her Majesty, he ran off as fast as his crooked green legs would carry him.
"Fetch the Imperial Squawmos," read the Cowardly Lion, with an amused twinkle in his yellow eyes as Notta tore off the page.
"If we stay here it is plain we shall be pickled to death," scrawled the clown, "so we bid you a fond but final farewell."
The Queen leaned forward, the better to read Notta's message and, while Nick, Bob and the Cowardly Lion fairly rocked with merriment at her discomfited expression, she suddenly unscrewed her lid.
"Help!" screamed Preserva loudly, sticking her head out of the jar. "Help! Help!" Then back went her head and down went the lid, only to have the whole performance repeated the next second. This she kept up at regular intervals until the whole party were simply convulsed. But it would have been wiser had they, instead of laughing, looked behind them, for presently a terrible thump on the back sent all the scales on Notta's disguise to trembling. It was the Imperial Squawmos, followed by all the Preserves in the city. While a dozen ran to calm the agitated Queen, who was still quivering in her jar, the rest surrounded the Flyaboutabus. Most alarming of all, the Imperial Squawmos was not in a jar. She was, in fact, a huge and towering cookywitch with a passion for preserving. And a cookywitch, I don't mind telling you, is next in wizardry to a sorceress. She had put up the inhabitants of the entire city and was the real ruler of the Preserve.
"A fish!" shrilled the Cookywitch, prodding Notta with a fork as long as an umbrella. "Ah, what an extreme pleasure. I have canned cats, dogs and people, but never a fish. And a boy," she chucked Bob familiarly under the chin. "Spare the jar and spoil the child," she quoted with a dreadful wink that sent Snorer circling into the air, where he flew uneasily over the heads of his luckless companions.
"Off to the preserving kettles with you!" shrilled the Squawmos, and Notta, in real alarm, made a dash toward the buttons to start the bus, but the Cookywitch brought down a heavy iron spoon, that she carried in one hand, and crushed the entire steering gear. The clown, seeing that escape for the time being was impossible, decided to go back to rule two and gain a little time by politeness.
"Imperial and Imperious Squawmos," began Notta, speaking somewhat stuffily through the fish head, "why are you so determined to preserve us against our wills, and why have you preserved these others?"